Are web designers resisting the inclusion of social cues when creating website user interface?

Using the resistance literature as an underpinning theoretical framework, this chapter analyzes how Web designers through their daily practices, (i) adopt recursive, adaptive, and resisting behavior regarding the inclusion of social cues online and (ii) shape the socio-technical power relationship between designers and other stakeholders. Five vignettes in the form of case studies with expert individual Web designers are used. Findings point out at three types of emerging resistance namely: market driven resistance, ideological resistance, and functional resistance. In addition, a series of propositions are provided linking the various themes. Furthermore, the authors suggest that stratification in Web designers’ type is occurring and that resistance offers a novel lens to analyze the debate.

Interoperable resource brokering with policy-based provisioning and job allocation

The increasing needs for computational power in areas such as weather simulation, genomics or Internet applications have led to sharing of geographically distributed and heterogeneous resources from commercial data centers and scientific institutions. Research in the areas of utility, grid and cloud computing, together with improvements in network and hardware virtualization has resulted in methods to locate and use resources to rapidly provision virtual environments in a flexible manner, while lowering costs for consumers and providers. ^ However, there is still a lack of methodologies to enable efficient and seamless sharing of resources among institutions. In this work, we concentrate in the problem of executing parallel scientific applications across distributed resources belonging to separate organizations. Our approach can be divided in three main points. First, we define and implement an interoperable grid protocol to distribute job workloads among partners with different middleware and execution resources. Second, we research and implement different policies for virtual resource provisioning and job-to-resource allocation, taking advantage of their cooperation to improve execution cost and performance. Third, we explore the consequences of on-demand provisioning and allocation in the problem of site-selection for the execution of parallel workloads, and propose new strategies to reduce job slowdown and overall cost.^

Investigando a compressão da percepção de distância em ambientes virtuais através da comparação entre dispositivos de visualização

The correct distance perception is important for executing various interactive tasks such as navigation, selection and manipulation. It is known, however, that, in general, there is a significant distance perception compression in virtual environments, mainly when using Head-Mounted Displays - HMDs. This perceived distance compression may bring various problems to the applications and even affect in a negative way the utility of those applications that depends on the correct judgment of distances. The scientific community, so far, have not been able to determine the causes of the distance perception compression in virtual environments. For this reason, it was the objective of this work to investigate, through experiments with users, the influence of both the field-of-view - FoV - and the distance estimation methods on this perceived compression. For that, an experimental comparison between the my3D device and a HMD, using 32 participants, seeking to find information on the causes of the compressed perception, was executed. The results showed that the my3D has inferior capabilities when compared to the HMD, resulting in worst estimations, on average, in both the tested estimation methods. The causes of that are believed to be the incorrect stimulus of the peripheral vision of the user, the smaller FoV and the smaller immersion sense, as described by the participants of the experiment.

Classificação de técnicas e auxílio à navegação de busca com base em sua carga cognitiva, precisão e eficiência

Navigation, in both virtual and real environments, is the process of a deliberated movement to a specific place that is usually away from the origin point, and that cannot be perceived from it. Navigation aid techniques (TANs) have as their main objective help finding a path through a virtual environment to a desired location and, are widely used because they ease the navigation on these unknown environments. Tools like maps, GPS (Global Positioning System) or even oral instructions are real world examples of TAN usage. Most of the works which propose new TANs for virtual environments aim to analyze their impact in efficiency gain on navigation tasks from a known place to an unknown place. However, such papers tend to ignore the effect caused by a TAN usage over the route knowledge acquisition process, which is important on virtual to real training transfer, for example. Based on a user study, it was possible to confirm that TANs with different strategies affects the performance of search tasks differently and that the efficiency of the help provided by a TAN is not inversely related to the cognitive load of the technique’s aids. A technique classification formula was created. This formula utilizes three factors instead of only efficiency. The experiment’s data were applied to the formula and we obtained a better refinement of help level provided by TANs.

Uso didático do Facebook como estratégia de leitura para o gênero textual poesia

The poor performance of students in reading and writing activities, prompted the search for actions that would minimize this problem, noticeable mainly in public education. The lack of interest in reading of poetic texts seen in students from the 7th year in a public school in RN, has led us to question the reasons for the rejection of poetry. Thus, the idea to organize and develop new reading possibilities mediated by digital technologies, considering the preference of teenagers by virtual environments. Therefore, it was essential to observe how students used web resources in order to plan actions that aimed to improve their reading performance. We present to justify the need for reflection on the educational problems starting from our reality, in order to establish appropriate procedures to minimize them. To this end, we draw is to investigate how students appropriated the Facebook social network in order to elaborate reading strategies using this platform. The study is anchored in the reflections of the following theorists and researchers: language concepts and language: Bakhtin (2011 [1979] 2006 [1999]), Bronckart (2012 [1999]), Marcuschi (2008); reading strategies: Leffa (1996) Solé (1998), Antunes (2009), Kleiman (2013); genre: Bakhtin (2011 [1979] 2006 [1999]), Marcuschi (2008); didactic sequence: Dolz, Noverraz and Schneuwly (2013 [2004]); technologies: Moran (2008 [2000]), Kenski (2007), Bento (2012), Behrens (2013); literary literacy: Cosson (2007); other theoretical orientations: PCN (1998), PDE (2008), Perrenoud (1999), among others. The methodology followed action research guidelines, a qualitative approach perspective. The research instruments included questionnaires, interviews, observations and field notes. The results pointed to the interest of students in this social network, which favored the development of a didactic sequence whose activities converged on the didactic use of Facebook as a support for the presentation of textual poetry genre, drawing the attention of students for reading. Thus, we reiterate the need to include the pedagogical use of Information and Communication Digital Technologies educational activities to better meet the expectations of the generation of "digital natives", offering them a significant Portuguese-speaking school that fits your interests.

Uso didático do Facebook como estratégia de leitura para o gênero textual poesia

The poor performance of students in reading and writing activities, prompted the search for actions that would minimize this problem, noticeable mainly in public education. The lack of interest in reading of poetic texts seen in students from the 7th year in a public school in RN, has led us to question the reasons for the rejection of poetry. Thus, the idea to organize and develop new reading possibilities mediated by digital technologies, considering the preference of teenagers by virtual environments. Therefore, it was essential to observe how students used web resources in order to plan actions that aimed to improve their reading performance. We present to justify the need for reflection on the educational problems starting from our reality, in order to establish appropriate procedures to minimize them. To this end, we draw is to investigate how students appropriated the Facebook social network in order to elaborate reading strategies using this platform. The study is anchored in the reflections of the following theorists and researchers: language concepts and language: Bakhtin (2011 [1979] 2006 [1999]), Bronckart (2012 [1999]), Marcuschi (2008); reading strategies: Leffa (1996) Solé (1998), Antunes (2009), Kleiman (2013); genre: Bakhtin (2011 [1979] 2006 [1999]), Marcuschi (2008); didactic sequence: Dolz, Noverraz and Schneuwly (2013 [2004]); technologies: Moran (2008 [2000]), Kenski (2007), Bento (2012), Behrens (2013); literary literacy: Cosson (2007); other theoretical orientations: PCN (1998), PDE (2008), Perrenoud (1999), among others. The methodology followed action research guidelines, a qualitative approach perspective. The research instruments included questionnaires, interviews, observations and field notes. The results pointed to the interest of students in this social network, which favored the development of a didactic sequence whose activities converged on the didactic use of Facebook as a support for the presentation of textual poetry genre, drawing the attention of students for reading. Thus, we reiterate the need to include the pedagogical use of Information and Communication Digital Technologies educational activities to better meet the expectations of the generation of "digital natives", offering them a significant Portuguese-speaking school that fits your interests.

A educação a distância e a formação docente

This study was guided by the following question: Is it possible to prepare good teachers for Basic School in Distance Learning (DL) online? The over all objective of this study was to identify and systematize the essential knowledge and skills for the practice of teaching in basic education as well to investigate whe ther the Distance Learning courses which train and prepare future teachers include all the knowledge and skills necessary for teaching practice. This is a qualitative the oretical and bibliographic research that aims to analyze the current stageof the knowledge on this theme. We selected recent papers on this subject, in order to study what has been written by the authors as well to know which are their significant findings. Data were collected from dissertations, thesis and books published on the theme. Preliminarily, the theme of the presentation and contextualization has been made and the argument about the relevance of the study for education. In the second section, we present an overview of the Distance Education in Brazil: coargumentncepts, characteristics, emergence, evolution and regulation. The third section the working environmentin training teachers and students in on line education, targeting to be familiar to Learning Virtual Environments (LVE), analyzing how these new learning spaces are settled and how students and teachers be have in front of the new settings of teaching and learning using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In the fourth section aimed to identify which are the essential knowledges and skills that the teacher must master in order to work competently as well to discover which are the personal and professional characteristics of a good teacher in the XXI century. The fifth section studied and analyzed the current situation with in Distance Education is carried out in Brazil. We identified the most significant contributions of Distance Learning to Brazilian Education System in order to contribute to advances in the debate on the effectiveness of teacher training courses in distance education mode online.Finally in the sixth section were made final remarks and presented the study results.

Uma metodologia para geração otimizada de ambientes virtuais baseados em usinas hidrelétricas

Based on the possibility of real-time interaction with three-dimensional environments through an advanced interface, Virtual Reality consist in the main technology of this work, used in the design of virtual environments based on real Hydroelectric Plants. Previous to the process of deploying a Virtual Reality System for operation, three-dimensional modeling and interactive scenes settings are very importante steps. However, due to its magnitude and complexity, power plants virtual environments generation, currently, presents high computing cost. This work aims to present a methodology to optimize the production process of virtual environments associated with real hydroelectric power plants. In partnership with electric utility CEMIG, several HPPs were used in the scope of this work. During the modeling of each one of them, the techiniques within the methodologie were addressed. After the evaluation of the computional techniques presented here, it was possible to confirm a reduction in the time required to deliver each hydroelectrical complex. Thus, this work presents the current scenario about development of virtual hydroelectric power plants and discusses the proposed methodology that seeks to optimize this process in the electricity generation sector.

MÍDIAS SOCIAIS DIGITAIS: ESPAÇO DE RELACIONAMENTO E COMUNICAÇÃO ESTRATÉGICA

O trabalho tem como proposta avaliar a postura das organizações nas mídias sociais digitais, considerando o fato de que esses novos ambientes virtuais têm modificado drasticamente a maneira pela qual elas promovem o relacionamento com seus públicos estratégicos. O objetivo principal da pesquisa é identificar e compreender como as organizações se posicionam diante de comentários desfavoráveis nas mídias sociais digitais que possam impactar sua imagem e reputação, bem como mostrar a importância de monitorar constantemente o consumidor e dialogar com ele nos canais digitais para evitar riscos à marca. A metodologia aplicada denomina-se Estudo de Casos Múltiplos, por meio da qual analisaram-se os comentários desfavoráveis às marcas: Vivo, Tim e Oi, na página do Facebook, durante o mês de setembro de 2015. Construiu-se um protocolo de pesquisa, e realizou-se o acompanhamento dessas marcas analisando-lhes os posts e os comentários desfavoráveis coletados no período. Constatou-se, após tais procedimentos que as operadoras apresentam frequentemente dificuldades para se relacionar com os públicos nas mídias sociais digitais, o que as coloca em risco quanto à sua imagem e reputação.

Redefinición de las TIC en el museo: del discurso invasivo al inclusivo

Las TIC son inseparables de la museografía in situ e imprescindibles en la museografía en red fija y móvil. En demasiados casos se han instalado prótesis tecnológicas para barnizar de modernidad el espacio cultural, olvidando que la tecnología debe estar al servicio de los contenidos de manera que resulte invisible y perfectamente imbricada con la museografía tradicional. Las interfaces móviles pueden fusionar museo in situ y en red y acompañar a las personas más allá del espacio físico. Esa fusión debe partir de una base de datos narrativa y abierta a obras materiales e inmateriales de otros museos de manera que no se trasladen las limitaciones del museo físico al virtual. En el museo in situ tienen sentido las instalaciones hipermedia inmersivas que faciliten experiencias culturales innovadoras. La interactividad (relaciones virtuales) debe convivir con la interacción (relaciones físicas y personales) y estar al servicio de todas las personas, partiendo de que todas, todos tenemos limitaciones. Trabajar interdisciplinarmente ayuda a comprender mejor el museo para ponerlo al servicio de las personas.

Navegação de um robô móvel baseado em um modelo de consciência artificial

This work presents a study about a the Baars-Franklin architecture, which defines a model of computational consciousness, and use it in a mobile robot navigation task. The insertion of mobile robots in dynamic environments carries a high complexity in navigation tasks, in order to deal with the constant environment changes, it is essential that the robot can adapt to this dynamism. The approach utilized in this work is to make the execution of these tasks closer to how human beings react to the same conditions by means of a model of computational consci-ousness. The LIDA architecture (Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent) is a cognitive system that seeks tomodel some of the human cognitive aspects, from low-level perceptions to decision making, as well as attention mechanism and episodic memory. In the present work, a computa-tional implementation of the LIDA architecture was evaluated by means of a case study, aiming to evaluate the capabilities of a cognitive approach to navigation of a mobile robot in dynamic and unknown environments, using experiments both with virtual environments (simulation) and a real robot in a realistic environment. This study concluded that it is possible to obtain benefits by using conscious cognitive models in mobile robot navigation tasks, presenting the positive and negative aspects of this approach.

Constructivism and ICTs to Improve Language Skills

Se examina la experiencia de los estudiantes y los profesores de dos grupos de un curso de Elocución con el uso de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TICs), para mejorar sus habilidades de expresión oral en inglés. Se presenta el diseño del curso y la metodología en la cual se fundamentó, así como las apreciaciones de los trabajos de estos a lumnos a la hora de mejorar las habilidades comunicativas orales por medio del enfoque constructivista. Se incluyen recomendaciones para poner en práctica esta metodología.A description is provided here of the experience of the students and teachers of two Elocution courses in which Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) were used to improve oral communication skills in English. Reference is made to the design of the course and the methodology it is based on, together with some insights of the assignments that students did to improve their English speaking skills through the constructivism approach. Recommendations are also provided for others interested in using this type of methodology.

Interoperable Resource Brokering with Policy-based Provisioning and Job Allocation

The increasing needs for computational power in areas such as weather simulation, genomics or Internet applications have led to sharing of geographically distributed and heterogeneous resources from commercial data centers and scientific institutions. Research in the areas of utility, grid and cloud computing, together with improvements in network and hardware virtualization has resulted in methods to locate and use resources to rapidly provision virtual environments in a flexible manner, while lowering costs for consumers and providers. However, there is still a lack of methodologies to enable efficient and seamless sharing of resources among institutions. In this work, we concentrate in the problem of executing parallel scientific applications across distributed resources belonging to separate organizations. Our approach can be divided in three main points. First, we define and implement an interoperable grid protocol to distribute job workloads among partners with different middleware and execution resources. Second, we research and implement different policies for virtual resource provisioning and job-to-resource allocation, taking advantage of their cooperation to improve execution cost and performance. Third, we explore the consequences of on-demand provisioning and allocation in the problem of site-selection for the execution of parallel workloads, and propose new strategies to reduce job slowdown and overall cost.

Literacia da informação em contexto universitário: Tendências e expectativas

O presente capítulo apresenta o que os estudos atuais sobre a literacia da informação em contexto universitário revelam sobre as principais tendências para esta área. O estudo procura dar uma visão abrangente destas tendências e das expectativas daí decorrentes a partir de três aspetos: a relação entre a educação, a aprendizagem e o ensino superior; as bibliotecas, as tecnologias e os ambientes virtuais e, por fim, reflete-se sobre a interação entre literacia da informação, emoções e cognição, num contexto social e individual.

‘Please leave your mobile phone on’ : Social educational networking in a social society : Encouraging in-class engagement at QUT across physical and virtual learning environments

Though stadium style seating in large lecture theatres may suggest otherwise, effective teaching and learning is a not a spectator sport. A challenge in creating effective learning environments in both physical and virtual spaces is to provide optimal opportunity for student engagement in active learning. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has developed the Open Web Lecture (OWL), a new web-based student response application, which seamlessly integrates a virtual learning environment within the physical learning space. The result is a blended learning experience; a fluid collaboration between academic and students connected to OWL via the University’s Wi-Fi using their own laptop or mobile web device. QUT is currently piloting the OWL application to encourage student engagement. OWL offers opportunities for participants to: • Post comments and questions • Reply to comments
 • "Like" comments
 • Poll students and review data • Review archived sessions. Many of these features instinctively appeal to student users of social networking media, yet avail the academic of control within the University network. Student privacy is respected through a system of preserving peer-peer anonymity, a functionality that seeks to address a traditional reluctance to speak up in large classes. The pilot is establishing OWL as an opportunity for engaging students in active learning opportunities by enabling • virtual learning in physical spaces for large group lectures, seminar groups, workshops and conferences • live collaborative technology connecting students and the academic via the wireless network using their own laptop or mobile device • an non- intimidating environment in which to ask questions • promotion of a sense of community • instant feedback • problem based learning. The student and academic response to OWL has been overwhelmingly positive, crediting OWL as an easy to use application, which creates effective learning opportunities though interactivity and immediate feedback. This poster and accompanying online presentation of the technology will demonstrate how OWL offers new possibilities for active learning in physical spaces by: • providing increased opportunity for student engagement • supporting a range of learners and learning activities • fostering blended learning experiences. The presentation will feature visual displays of the technology, its various interfaces and feedback including clips from interviews with students and academics participating in the early stages of the pilot.